Oh, Monday!

Mondays continue to be my least favourite day of the week. I hate having this bias but it seems like not-good things always happen on Mondays. Three Mondays ago, one of ‘my’ consultants was found dead in his hotel room. Two Monday’s ago, I had to fire someone and last Monday, I had to meet with the consultant who I had to fire for no reason other than the company decided they wanted to bring someone back and didn’t have room for both programmers. This week, one of my candidates managed to get us banned from sending any more cnadidates.

I’m thinking I should just take Mondays off. It might be easier. Today’s incident was due to the fact that despite my strong counseling against mentioning it, my candidate decided to blurt out the fact that he was going to be quitting programming in order to become a lawyer in two years’ time. I promise, I’m not prone to shady counseling. I don’t usually tell my candidates to lie. In this case, I didn’t tell him to lie. I just told him very, very specifically that if he wanted the new job, it would probably be best if he didn’t let them know he might be leaving in two years.

The thing is that in the IT development world, two years is a long time. In my job, I deal with a lot of contractors who feel that more than a six month stint at any job is too much of a commitment. Contractors generally enjoy moving around, trying new companies, working on new projects. It’s not for everyone but there are a lot of folks out there who like the temp jobs because they get variety.

These days, developers are very much in demand. It’s a candidate’s market. They have the freedom to pick and choose when they decide they want a new job and where they end up going. It’s hard to let companies know that. It’s the reason that my old company is desperate for a couple of developers and can’t figure out why they’re not getting any decent resumes. They simply don’t move fast enough. If a Java developer puts his/her resume out on the job boards, they will literally be flooded with calls from recruiters within ten minutes. If you want to work with them, you have to move fast. By the time they’ve interviewed and been offered a job with my company, chances are they already have three other offers on the table.

This is not an exaggeration. This is why it’s hard to explain to big companies that they can’t put a Java developer through two phone screens and two rounds of face-to-face interviews. It’s a nice idea and an definitely the ideal- if you’re bringing a new employee on board, you want to make sure they’re the perfect fit. However, in the present job market, it’s just not feasible if you really want to get someone hired. There simply isn’t time. It’s a nuisance but it’s the truth.

This is all my way of explaining why I told my candidate NOT to mention his lawyer aspirations. I didn’t want him to lie. However, I didn’t want him to mention it because the company where he interviewed still doesn’t understand the revolving nature of working with developers. Two years is a very long time to a developer. To a major company who still does things as they did in the 1980’s, two years is a drop in the bucket and not worthwhile to bring someone on board.

So, naturally, when my candidate DID mention his timeline, the company got a little upset. They were furious with me and my company for wasting their time. I didn’t see it as a waste. I saw it as an opportunity to actually add someone to their staff who was a good developer who wanted to work there. Considering they’ve been trying to fill the position for several months, I saw it as a good option for them.

They did not see it this way. They saw us screwing them over. They promptly informed us that we were not to send any more resumes as the hiring manager refused to work with us.

Obviously, I felt horrible. Even though my boss encouraged me to send the candidate in the first place and encouraged me to remind him NOT to mention his career goals as a lawayer, I still feel that it was my fault. Of course, it really is my candidates fault for not using his common sense but in the long run, there’s nothing we can do. It makes me look like a bad recruiter, it makes my account manager look shady and it doesn’t help our company much.

When I finally asked my candidate why he ended up mentioning his career plan, he said that the interviewer asked him what he liked to do in his spare time so he mentioned law school. I get that, I suppose. It's what he does in his spare time but, well, I can't help thinking if he'd have just said something like...fishing or cooking or hanging out with his wife/kids, that might have been a wee bit more sensible but that would be too much to have hoped...right?

Still, the deed is done. My lesson is learned. Once again, I cannot control what my candidates say and do. It’s just the nature of working with human beings. I don’t always like it but it’s what makes life interesting.

Of course, I also quite like it when things aren’t quite that interesting. I’d actually rather like a Monday where someone doesn’t get fired, die or get us banned from a vendor list. Maybe next week will be better?

Here’s hoping. I’m a firm believer that there’s always hope.

Happy Monday!

It's the Small Things that Make a Day Remarkable

There are some days in life that don’t seem particularly remarkable on their own but there are moments that will make them remarkable in your mind for a long time to come.

For example, today was remarkable because I got to make someone very happy. It’s a lovely feeling.

Part of the reason I was not happy in my last job (besides bad bosses, optimistic bathrooms and office politics) was because I didn’t get to work with people. As a general rule, I quite like people. Granted, there are days like I had on Saturday where I just feel crotchety towards the whole human race because they seem to be working against me but, for the most part, I generally like people. They’re unpredictable. They don’t always do the right thing. Yet they also make life nice and interesting. Also, it feels really good to help someone. I like helping people.

In my job, I see all types of candidates. I see the ones who aren’t employed because they were laid off and the job market has just been bad. I see the ones who aren’t employed because they were ‘let go’ from their job. One thing I have learned is that when someone was ‘let go’ from a job, they were never “fired” and it was never their fault. It was always the fault of the manager or the HR department. While I think in some cases, this may be the case, usually if someone was ‘let go’, there was a reason. It takes a while to dig to the reason.

During an interview, I’ve learned that I have to be sneaky to whittle out the good candidates from the weirdos. Another thing I’ve learned is that everyone is a little bit of a weirdo. Most of the time it’s manageable and it doesn’t really show. These are usually candidates who are currently in a job but want more money or more of a challenge. The candidates who haven’t had a job in a while but have been on a ton of interviews to no fruition…well, they’re a little trickier. Usually, I try to do in-person interviews with these folks. That way you can see them while they’re talking to you and it helps you figure out what might be ‘wrong.’

Sometimes, as awful as it is to say, it’s apparent quite quickly. For example, there are candidates that show up who clearly don’t bathe much. Sitting in a small conference room with them and having the door closed actually makes it quickly apparent that it might be a little hard to work with them. We can’t really discriminate against them but there are times when we do have to suggest that if they get an interview with a client, they need to be clean and tidy.

We’ve had candidates with no teeth. Quite a few of them, actually. I try not to discriminate on something so minor as having no teeth but it’s a little…offputting. We still try to send these candidates on interviews but we can’t control our clients’ reactions and, sadly, if they have a problem with toothlessness, we can’t force them to hire a candidate. It sounds mean because, after all, maybe they have no teeth because they have no job and I really WANT to help them find a job so they can get teeth but we have little control over if candidates actually get hired.

I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that I am not a bad person and I try to respect every person and so if I have someone come in who’s missing, say, an arm or a leg, I wouldn’t discriminate against them AT ALL. It’s harder with teeth. I can’t explain why. It just..is.

Maybe it’s because people with no teeth have a less interesting ‘story’ than someone with a missing limb. A missing limb could have been bitten off by a shark or mangled in a lawnmower. Missing teeth if knocked out in a fascinating way generally get replaced. If they’re missing without replacement, they probably just fell out. That’s not such an interesting story, say, as my dad’s story- he lost several teeth as a youngster by playing on a slide. They were playing “bridge’ where one person straddles the slide and the other kids slide underneath. My dad was the bridge. He fell off and knocked his teeth out.

My dad has a story to go with his teeth. He also have false teeth. He likes to flip them down so he has this rather creepy skeletal grin and do a slow wave. It makes me laugh every time. Also, he lost his teeth in the English Channel once. That’s another story to go with his teeth. Still, most of the time if there are false teeth involved, you don’t know they’re false teeth. Thus, if a candidate comes in without any teeth, false or real, you can’t help but wonder why they don’t have any teeth but you can’t ask their story.

That was a rambling about teeth especially since it most likely was a thinly veiled attempt not to make myself sound evil for judging someone based on their teeth. Or lack thereof.

Anyway, moving on, sometimes candidates come in and they seem normal. Then you ask them something as simple as “what’s your dream job” and they spend ten minutes explaining how it would be rebuilding antique cars. Now, while I think that’s a perfectly respectable ‘dream job’, it’s not terribly helpful. What I prefer is someone who says, “my dream job would be to work on antique cars but since that’s not very realistic, I’d like a job that fits my skillset, provides me with a challenge in a company that doesn’t suck.”

When I don’t get that response but, instead, a ten-minute diatribe regarding the beauty and freedom of the antique car, it’s a little…disturbing.

In short, what I’m trying to say with my ramblings about teeth, antique cars and amputated limbs is that it’s important to interview candidates in detail because it does actually work out. Which leads me to the original topic of today’s blog: Helping people.

A few months ago, one of my first placements was a lady who’d been out of work for a while and feeling down about it. When I told her she had a job offer, she was so excited, she hugged me and promised to send people my way. That was a good day and it made me love my job.

The best part is that she did send someone my way. It was a friend of hers who’d been laid off and had been out of work for months. Then she found a very low-paying job that made her miserable. When I talked to her, there was a certain level of empathy on my part. Having had a job where I had to psych myself up to get out of bed and go into the office every day and how I had to make sure to control my urges to strangle people with a yoga strap, I knew what she was going through. Thus, I wanted to help her.

Today, I got to tell her we’d found a position for her and that she’d be starting in two weeks. When she came in almost immediately to fill out her paperwork, she was so happy, she was almost crying. She gave me one of the hugest hugs and “thank you’s” I’ve ever had.

That’s why I do my job. The paycheck is nice. I like my coworkers. My office is nifty. I like that I get commissions and incentives.

Yet, honestly, cheesy as it sounds, that’s the best part of my job. It makes me feel like I’ve done something nice, something that’s slightly remarkable because I’m helping someone make their life just a little better.

Sometimes, it’s the small things that make a day remarkable.

That and a full set of teeth, real or false.

Don’t judge me. Please.

Happy Wednesday!

Visions of Fridays Dance in My Head

I think I've said before that I like Thursdays as a general rule. I find them akin to Christmas Even where you know the 'big day' is next but the anticipation of that is almost as sweet as the actual day of Christmas itself.

In this case, the 'big day' is simply Friday. While we still have to work on Fridays, they're like the reward at the end of the week. Things are a little more relaxed. People talk more on Fridays. The day goes by quickly, mostly because I have a lot of meetings on Fridays for some reason.

As not a huge fan of meetings, I don't mind meetings on Friday afternoons, particularly when they involve my boss. He's very easily distractable and clearly has a case of the 'wanting to escape early and start the weekend off right.'

So, pretty much, in a way, Fridays are part of the weekend because you know how matter how rough they are, there are two beautiful days of freedom just beyond the rise.

Today was a good Thursday. I had a couple of meetings which weren't too bad. I find that I tend to doodle a lot more in some meetings than others. Doodling, for me, is almost like meditation. I have to doodle in order to listen. As my pencil sketches odd designs and things on the page, my mind is listening to what people are saying.

Today, my doodles were off odd things. I drew a superhero who was an owl, two large evil looking pumpkins. Then I attempted to sketch a piece of corn. I don't mean the sweetcorn you buy in the supermarket, it was the type of corn that looks like wheat, that they make into flower. In England, when you see a corn field, there's no sweetcorn to be found. Instead it's rows and rows of green or golden sheaves, depending on the month, waving in the wind.

This is the corn I grew up with. My older brother used to go off to the corn fields to get up to mischief with his friends. They'd play in the fields, hiding from one another when the corn was high enough. When it was harvest season, they'd use the haystacks made from the dried corn stalks as objects in which to dive.

In our art classes, we'd have to draw pieces of this corn, capturing each kernel just right. Nowadays, while I remember in my mind how it looks, my pencil can no longer remember how to sketch it. It was sad. I used to know how to nest each kernel so it actually looked like corn. Now it looks rather bloated and more like a Christmas tree.

I was a little worried about this, whether it meant I was losing some of my Englishness. I compensated by making sure I could still remember how to make the pound sign. I don't mean that crosshatch thing you see on phone keypads, I mean the UK monetary type of pound sign. Fortunately, I could without any thought at all.

Thus, my meetings passed quickly. I like it when that happens. Doodling is good for making sure you're not so bored you start visualizing stabbing people in the eye with your pencil.

In addition to my meetings, we also had cake. I'm not a big fan of cake but today I was in the mood for a piece. My piece had plenty of frosting on it and clearly, I was in the mood for that more than cake because I realized that I'd slowly eaten all of that and left part of the cake. That's unusual for me. I'm not usually a cake eater at all.

I also had a meeting with the man who interviewed me last week. I was offered the job I interviewed for. At the moment, I'm 98% sure I'm ready for the change since the salary and benefits package met my requirements. All I need is the formal offer from the company which I'm supposed to get tomorrow.

The prospect of this change is both exciting and a little scary. I like this new company. People there seemed genuinally to like their jobs. Having been involved in a series of candidate interviews for a programmer position we have at work, I've had the chance to be on both sides of the interview process over the past two weeks. You can tell when someone is genuinely excited about their job. I don't think many people in our company are. In this new company, three of the four employees have been there over ten years. That says a lot.

I may change my mind but it's a lovely feeling to go into my Friday with this opportunity on my mind. It will help me focus on my current job and truly decide if I want to leave or whether the new opportunity is too great to pass up. I suggest the latter but I want time to sleep on it and make absolutely sure it's the right thing for me.

For now, I have that and the pleasure of it being Friday tomorrow. The weekend is wide open at the moment with no firm plans. It will give me plenty of time to do some serious thinking so that, by Monday, I will know for sure.

Then again, I have several meetings tomorrow. Maybe I should use those as my thinking time instead.

We'll see how it goes.

Happy Friday!